This document relates to data processing.
The Internet provides access to a wide variety of resources such as video or audio files, web pages for particular subjects, book articles, or news articles. A search system can identify resources in response to a text search query that includes one or more search phrases (i.e., one or more words) or in response to user interactions with another interface. For example, a map interface can include a user interface element that allows a user to input or select search phrases. The search phrases that are submitted by a user through the map interface can include location information from the displayed map area. In response to receiving search phrases, the search system identifies resources that are responsive to the search phrases and ranks the resources, for example, based on their relevance to the search query and on measures of quality of the resources. In turn, the search system provides search results that reference (e.g., link to) the identified resources. The search results are typically ordered for viewing according to the rank.
Some users that provide a search query are interested in receiving search results referencing resources that include information relevant to a particular location. For example, a user that submits the search query “Atlanta Family Activities” may be searching for web pages that provide information about the city of Atlanta. Search results provided in response to the search query “Atlanta Family Activities” may include a web page that does not provide information about family activities in Atlanta, or even the city of Atlanta, but rather merely includes the word Atlanta.
For example, one resource referenced by the search results may be a retailer site that includes a drop-down menu enabling the user to specify their current location in order to identify retail locations near the selected location. Another resource may include the word Atlanta in a footnote of the resource that specifies a business location of the company that developed the web page. Although both of the resources described above include the text “Atlanta,” it is unlikely that these resources would satisfy the informational needs of the user that submitted the search query for “Atlanta Family Activities” because these resources provide very little information about family activities in the city of Atlanta.